Sue Williams and Michael Leach spoke at a recent virtual event hosted by Children’s Trust called Ask the Experts, where the pair of leaders discussed the importance of child and family well-being and the role prevention plays.
DSS Director Michael Leach, Children’s Trust CEO Sue Williams, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, and U.S. Children’s Bureau Associate Commissioner Jerry Milner gathered at the 2019 Building Hope for Children Conference in Greenville to speak before 400 child-serving professionals about prevention of child abuse and neglect is paramount.
As the state director for the South Carolina Department of Social Services, Michael Leach knows the important role of his agency in providing protective services for children while helping strengthen families so they can achieve stability and permanency.
But he also realizes there is likely a better way to fulfill that mission.
“If we can put the funding on the prevention side and heal families before the child welfare system, we’ll see less trauma, we’ll see less poor outcomes,” Leach said. “Prevention is moving upstream and working with families in a variety of ways.”
Leach was the guest expert at Ask the Experts, an event held by Children’s Trust. Children’s Trust CEO Sue Williams hosted the online conversation to give Children’s Trust supporters greater insight into the organization’s work to prevent child abuse and neglect.
Williams emphasized the importance of working with families in an equitable fashion that integrates government and community at the policy and practice levels. She views the partnership with DSS as an essential collaboration that can benefit children and families at every stage, from preventative measures to trauma-informed care.
“A lot of people know that prevention occurs on a continuum with family strengthening and prevention services on one end, and then what we call the child welfare system on the other end,” Williams said. “But I want to be clear that child welfare is not just the DSS system. Child welfare is the courts, it’s the foster care, it’s guardians, it’s group homes. It’s all of the people who touch the lives of a child once they’re in the system. Children’s Trust partners in a lot of ways with DSS throughout the system, all working to make sure that children and families have the services that they need to be strong.”
Michael Leach and Sue Williams chat at the 2019 KIDS COUNT Data Book release event at the Richland Library.
Children’s Trust trains DSS employees in the prevention of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), early childhood development and growth, and child passenger safety at regular seminars as well as larger events like the biennial Building Hope for Children Conference. Children’s Trust and DSS also team up every April for Child Abuse Prevention Month, an annual awareness campaign that brings together community stakeholders to promote happy, healthy childhoods. The Duke Endowment and DSS are the key funders for the Strengthening Families Program (SFP), which Children’s Trust implements at more than 30 sites around the state.
Now that partnership is about to become even stronger. In September, South Carolina was selected as one of four jurisdictions nationwide chosen to participate in the first tier of a cutting-edge national program that aims to move child welfare systems from traditional, reactive child protection systems to advanced systems designed to support holistic child and family well-being while preventing child maltreatment and unnecessary family separation.
This first-of-its-kind partnership – Thriving Families, Safer Children: A National Commitment to Well-Being – is an initiative developed by the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Casey Family Programs, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Prevent Child Abuse America. This work will include public, private and philanthropic sectors and create more just and equitable systems to break harmful multi-generational cycles of trauma and poverty to benefit all children and families.
Leach credited the leadership of Children’s Trust and its relationship as the state affiliate for PCA America and the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT project as a key element in the selection of this state to participate in the initiative. He discussed the encouragement received by DSS and Children’s Trust from peers in Nebraska, Colorado and Los Angeles County, and he reiterated the significance of community involvement as crucial to stepping up to the challenge of transforming the system.
“This is something that I believe wholeheartedly in, and I think it’s the right thing to do,” Leach said. “I don’t want to waste time. There’s a lot to fix in the system and we’re going to work to fix the system, but I also want to make sure that we actually make a difference. That’s a big piece of it.”
“They were excited by the work that we have been doing,” Williams said. “We are working to totally re-imagine this idea of a child welfare system and move it more toward a child and family well-being system (by) rethinking how we interact with families on a more positive strengths-based approach.”
During the webinar, Williams pointed to the successes of Children’s Trust in working with local partners across the state to implement evidence-based family-strengthening programs, including Nurse-Family Partnership, Parents as Teachers, and Healthy Families America as well as the Strengthening Families Program.
Program providers and the families they serve acknowledge the positive impact these programs can have to promote family and child health, encourage positive parenting, reduce household conflict, promote child development and school readiness, and emphasize economic self-sufficiency.
“To me, being able to give them that small gift, really, that they can then carry on, and we know then those children’s lives will have seen something different, a different way of interacting,” Williams said.
